Grave’s End, A True Ghost Story
by Elaine Mercado, R.N.
Introduction by Hans Holzer
Llewellyn, 2001, 2nd Printing
ISBN: 0 – 73870 – 003 – 7
Trade Paperback
This is a well-written, rational portrait of a family dealing with the effects of a haunting. As is the established pattern with such things, it begins slowly and escalates slowly until it becomes intolerable.
This is less about a haunted house and more about a haunted family.
Mercado makes clear that fear exacerbates tolerance. While she is afraid, due, as she admits, to having had a strict religious upbringing that taught her to fear anything one might fairly label supernatural, or paranormal, her daughters are less afraid. One, the older, in her teens, is interested and curious about the hauntings.
The book takes us into their lives as they deal with first a strained, then a broken marriage. These stresses add to the fraught atmosphere in the house, which also brings to bear glowing balls of light, (she does not use the term orbs, which is refreshing), that bounce along the ceiling or vanish into walls.
There are strange thumps, thuds, and footsteps. We see small lumpish clumps of dusty-looking shadows flit along the floorboards. In Victorian times they’d have been called rats but she has the house checked for vermin and there is no sign.
There are strange voices, too. The family’s names are called, growls raise hackles, and shadows condense and loom over beds. Finally, people are seen, seemingly solid until they fade away. It is oppressive, with much aggression and hostility shown.
All of this is presented matter-of-factly by Mercado, who tends to filter it all through psychology. She also digs into the history of the place, seeking links to possible reasons for the odd things going on. A recurring image is these three women alone in the house huddled in one room, afraid to be in their own beds, trying to get through another night of pestering. It’s an effective image of dread and of coping.
What comes through is determination and strength of character as Mercado and her daughters deal with being stalked by the unknown. When desperation peaks, priests are consulted; the clergy waves the family off, not interested in bothering. Further desperation leads them to agree, finally, to consult with investigators of the paranormal, including, at last, in February of 1995, a medium, Marisa Anderson, and the renowned paranormal investigator, author, and personality Dr. Hans Holzer agree to come check things out.
They say a vortex exists, and the medium goes straight to all the problem areas, and knows where the neutral zones are in the house, without being told a thing. Dr. Holzer in tow, she leads them to the basement, where a crawlspace door has been opened long since by the children in the house.
What follows is a prolonged battle of wills between the entities, spirits, or energies in the house and the medium, who eventually ushers all the wayward spirits “into the light” so they can move on. It is nothing like POLTERGEIST, with no pyrotechnics, no special effects, and no dramatic confrontations. Quiet concentration and application of will, with a few whispered words, are all that happens outwardly, yet, when the medium and Dr. Holzer are finished clearing and cleansing the house, its atmosphere at once lightens and loses its oppression.
Psychological? Did the professionals give them a lengthy ritual performed as theater to allow a psychological readjustment and acceptance of living in the house where a marriage had ended and a new career and three lives had started over? Maybe that’s it.
Or maybe there are things we do not understand completely that can be helped or hindered by people who open themselves to the paranormal and try to discover and play by its rules.
Either way, this is an enjoyable, fascinating book, one of the most influential and important in the literature of the paranormal. Recommended for its level-headed narration of events and commonsense approach to dealing with experiences beyond most people’s lives.
/// /// ///
